For David Chase, HBO was the last port of call. He had spent the previous year shopping his idea for a new drama series to the big broadcasters. One by one, they passed. Fox wanted simpler storylines. CBS asked why the main character had to be in therapy. ABC said there was too much swearing. All

Robert Lustig is a paediatric endocrinologist at the University of California who specialises in the treatment of childhood obesity. A 90-minute talk he gave in 2009, titled Sugar: The Bitter Truth, has now been viewed more than six million times on YouTube. In it, Lustig argues forcefully that fructose, a form of sugar ubiquitous in

JOHN HAMMOND WAS a boy of ten when he fell in love with the new music called jazz. Rather than heading home after school to his family’s mansion on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, he would jump on an uptown bus and deposit himself, 30 blocks away, in a different world. The world he

The arrival of Facebook and Twitter appeared to threaten the advertising industry’s very existence. So what happened next? Even admen have souls, and some of them are enduring dark nights. Jeff Goodby is co-chairman of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, a San Francisco advertising agency responsible for some of the most famous campaigns of the 1990s,

David Ogilvy believed that the best advertising writers were marked out by ‘an insatiable curiosity about every subject under the sun’. Nowadays, as Ian has spotted, the same high level of curiosity is a requirement for progress in more and more jobs in business and government. In this excellent book, Ian Leslie explains why: the obvious ideas have mostly been done; what progress it is left now happens obliquely.

Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Group

Curiosity—that elusive, mysterious state—seems always to slide away when writers attempt to dissect it. Ian Leslie not only offers a compelling analysis of how curiosity works, he tells us how to prompt it in our children our employees, and ourselves. Both fascinating and eminently practical, Curious is a book to be relished.

Daniel Willingham, Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia and author of Why Don’t Students Like School?

I would never have guessed that so slim a volume could so richly pique my curiosity about curiosity. Stuffed with facts, ideas, questions, quotes, musings, findings, puzzles, mysteries, and stories, this is a book—as Montaigne said of travel—with which to ‘rub and polish’ one’s brain. It’s the most delightful thing I’ve read about the mind in quite some time.

David Dobbs, features writer for the New York Times

In this important and hugely enjoyable book, Ian Leslie shows why it’s more important than ever that we find new ways to cultivate curiosity—because our careers, our happiness, and our children’s flourishing all depend upon it. Curious is, appropriately enough, a deeply fascinating exploration of the human capacity for being deeply fascinated, as well as a practical guide for becoming more curious yourself.

Oliver Burkeman, author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking

A beautiful and important exploration of the need to nurture, develop and explore our curiosity even when we’ve long left our childhood behind. Ian Leslie reminds us of those essential life lessons that we tend to forget in our quest to be busy and productive: that sometimes, it’s ok to waste time; and often, the most productive mind ends up being the mind most open to indulging its most childish impulses.

Maria Konnikova, author of the New York Times bestseller Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

Ian Leslie argues that true curiosity is in decline. This book is a beautiful and fascinating tribute to one of the mankind’s most important virtues.